Many models for characterizing and evaluating e-services emphasise different levels of complexity and maturity of e-services. These frameworks takes as their starting point an organisational point of view on e-services where it seems that integration between different public authorities is the ultimate goal. An unresolved quest is however to judge and design e-services desired by the citizen. For this scope it is essential to identify recipients of the e-service and for what purpose these recipients ought to use the e-service. One group of recipients of public e-services is the citizens. In this paper shortcomings of existing frameworks are identified founded in a citizen-centric value base. These shortcomings are then used as a driver for putting forward an alternative model for evaluation and design of e-services.